I think my laptop GPU is dying, nvlddmkm, Clevo P150EM with GTX 680M

edit removed, posted in specific laptop subforum

 

Kind of blows since I dropped $240 on it last month for a brand new power supply and battery but I think my 680M in my Clevo P150EM is showing signs of death.

It started yesterday. Everything was going well. I had SWTOR left on for hours in a low power state running a macro (it's snowball season) (limited cpu speed via xtu, limited framerate to 30 instead of my usual 60 with rivatuner). Then when I woke up removed all the limits and launched The Division. Played with a friend for a few hours and no issues. He went offline so I switched to StarCraft Remastered and noticed one peculiar thing, the marine unit portrait in the unit selection area was messed up but I figured it was some weird bug. Come to think of it, the audio in The Division was bugging out weirdly too, but my friend had the exact same bug so I think that was unrelated. Well I switched to StarCraft 2 to finally play some Nova campaign and out of nowhere my system BSODs on me mid campaign. I tried launching SWTOR and it'd start artifacting green MS paint spray like images everywhere then BSOD. Even the GPU render test in GPUZ was getting the same green artifacting issue and would BSOD. Every artifacting would turn into a BSOD (except the one time I got an Orange Screen of Death apparently). The 3 errors I saw were VIDEO_SCHEDULER_INTERNAL_ERROR and nvlddmkm.sys error. I also once got BASE_POOL_HEADER or something like that when I tried The Division and that lead to the single OrangeSOD.

My first attempt to remedy this was to check the drivers. I couldn't uninstall the driver normally because it wouldn't show up in the Control Panel which was weird. Eventually I was able to cleanly remove the old driver (which wasn't that old) and install the latest version. This didn't remedy anything. At first I was able to set Nvidia Control Panel to use the integrated GPU only and launching games then was of no issue. I could still play a few of my games on that GPU with reasonable FPS at lowest settings. But then I had a BSOD without any 3D application running. I did have Discord up with hardware acceleration on but eventually I could get a BSOD at anytime and they were all the same video scheduler issue.

Since then I've taken some minor hardware measures (mainly in partial prep to start parting out stuff). I secured erased my mSATA drive since I have no other system that can access it without an external enclosure and kept that separate from the system. I moved my RAM dimms around just in case. And lastly I clean reinstalled my OS for the first time in like 3+ years (this was a clean install of 8.1 initially). I've kept my 2nd monitor unplugged since and kept my USB audio attachments and laptop cooler unplugged. Only things attached are the Ethernet jack and USB mouse.

Initially after clean install and all drivers installed, I had no issues. I tried running the GPUZ render but couldn't get it to show since lack of DirectX I guess. I installed 3DMark since that was the smallest of my 3D applications. At first when I tried to launch it my system flat froze and artifacts showed on the 3DMark window. Upon reboot it apparently didn't install correctly. I finished the install and ran 3DMark Time Spy and there were 0 artifacts and it ran flawlessly. Got my usual 8fps lol. I then installed The Division and again that ran without issue as well. I installed SWTOR overnight and went to bed and set my computer to not be allowed to sleep. When I woke up there were 0 issues. I booted SWTOR and it ran fine. Interestingly though, it was capping to 60fps on its own (which is good imo since it means I don't need rivatuner launched with it all the time). But I needed to be sure so I messed with vsync and fullscreen settings till it uncapped itself and sure enough the screen started having issues. It switched between the splash screen constantly that I had to use Task Manager to end it. Some stuff just wouldn't load then the splash screen would show and it would go back and forth. I tried launching The Division again and it crashed on loading. There was some minor red artifacting this time on the screen. I launched SWTOR on my integrated GPU to be able to adjust the video settings back then relaunched on the discrete GPU. It kind of booted. Started with some red artifacting here and there with some things not loading and going back to the splash screen but eventually showed up kind of. I still exited the game to be safe.

None of these issues though this time around have caused a BSOD. Instead at one point I got a notification from Windows 10 that it had blocked swtor.exe from running on my graphics hardware, never seen that before. That's when the game just went pure black with only my mouse and game audio working. I was able to end the game that time via task manager. I checked the Event Viewer and sure enough there are 800 nvlddmkm errors in the last hour and none prior to that. The error associated with the freeze from 3DMark earlier doesn't have an nvlddmkm error but just a critical error for kernel-power stating the computer unexpectedly shut down.

I never overclock my GPU but it has been running the svl7 vBIOS with default voltage for 2+ years.

So at this point I guess what are my options? Is my GPU borked? It seems like my GPU is dying at a hardware level after all the measures I've taken. I'm not keen on having to buy a new computer or a new MXM GPU for that matter since I'm not in the best financial situation right now (buying the new PSU and Battery a month ago was under the idea I'd get another year at least out of this machine and that was a hit). I've been looking up MXM GPUs and the best I could find was around $400 for a Clevo 680M on eBay or spending $650 for a 1060 from Eurocom albeit from what I read on the forums it seems like there is a bit of a hassle to get it working. With the system being 5 years old though and used heavily over those 5 years, I'm assuming the safer choice at this point is to just get a new computer and not gamble anymore.

 

What's your laptop?

 

You could upgrade your gpu with a msi gtx1060 or a eurocom gtx1060

Ask @woodzstack

 

Thanks for the mention, We have gotten in contact with eachother, and I am preparing him with options and trying to help him as best as possible.

He has a Clevo P150EM. Is considering another 680M or 1060 ATM. His concerns were the modifying of the heatsink and support and return policy and of course cost

He's in good hands, as you know I'll work closely with him to get him wherever he is comfortable.

Cheers and happy newyear !